‘Speaking of big men,’ said Sanscript, laying down the newspaper and wiping the dew from his spectacles with the table-cloth, ‘speaking of big men reminds me of the time I was in California—
    ‘John,’ interrupted Mrs. Sanscript, ‘are you getting ready to tell one of your big California lies again?
    ‘No, madam, I’m getting ready to tell about a big California boy—the biggest fellow ever was born.’
    ‘Was he born so, John?’ inquired Mrs. Sauscript, innocently, for she saw the old man was into another whopper, and she made up her mind she’d encourage him once, and see how far his elastic mind would extend without bursting.
    ‘Born so big? Bless you! no. He was born just like any other baby—no bigger than a kitten, with a red face and a bald head. But he growed after he was born. Everything grows out in California, and keeps on growing and growing till the limit is stretched.
    ‘Just like your stories’ thought Mrs. Sanscript.
    ‘But,’ continued John, ‘this man I'm talking about beat everything in California growing. The big trees were discounted. His parents had to piece his crib before the child was eight months old. One day he went to school, and when he got back in the evening the door was too little—he couldn’t get in.
    ‘Oh, John,’ exclaimed Mrs. Sanscript, throwing up both hands.     ‘I know its hard to believe, wife; but I hope I may never die if it isn’t true. He lay down to sleep on the porch that night, and next day the old man busted the gable end out of the house and put up double doors like they have in a barn, just to accommodate his son.’
    ‘But, John, that couldn’t have done much good,’ suggested Mrs. Sanscript
    ‘ Why not?’ asked John, with a frightened look, fearing the old woman was about to corner him.
    ‘ Why that only let the boy in one room, and how could he get through into the rest of the house?
    ‘He couldn’t. One room had to do him, because the old man swore he’d see that brat banked up before he’d knock out the partitions, too.’
    ‘See the brat—what?’
    ‘See him banked up. Don’t you understand? Damned—banked up.’
    ‘Oh!’
    ‘Yes, sir; but the house failed at last.’
    ‘Failed, John.’
    ‘That is what I said. The young man outgrew the old family mansion! He woke up one morning and found the double doors too narrow to furnish his exit. No time was to be lost, It was a fine growing weather in spring, and the old man swore he wasn’t prepared to have his house split all to the devil by a growing boy, so he just knocked off the door-jambs to squeeze the youngster through.’
    ‘And then ?’
    ‘Well, that’s the last time the young man of Calaveras ever got inside of a mansion this side the sky.’
    ‘This side the sky?’
    ‘That’s what I said. Don’t know about the mansions up there,’ said Sanscript, casting his eyes piously toward the attic.
    ‘ Why, John, did the poor dear boy die?
    ‘Did he die? Didn’t he though.’
    ‘But, John, how did the boy get clothes to fit him?
    ‘That brings me to my personal recollection of him. Let’s see,’ said John, looking into the fire with great steadiness. ‘I think it was in the fall of ’56—anyhow it was coming nigh onto winter. I was sitting into Joe Geiger’s tailor shop down in ’Frisco, talking over the prospects for a cold season, when a boy came in and said there was a man down on the Commons as big as a meetin’ house, who wanted to see Mr. Geiger right away. ‘Then why don’t he come and see me,’ said Geiger. ‘’Cause he can’t get through the streets without obstructing trade and delaying transportation,’ said the boy. That settled it. Geiger and me started right straight down to the Commons to see the big man.
    ‘A circus must have come to town,’ said Geiger, as we emerged on the Commons.
    ‘Why?’ asked I.
    ‘Because there is the tent,’ said he
    ‘Tent!’ said the boy who had followed us ; ‘that aint no tent ; that’s the man what wants to see you. He is sitting down now.’
    Sure enough it was the big boy from Calaveras. He arose to receive us, and we stood looking up to him like rats looking at an elephant.
    ‘I want to get a suit of clothes,’ came rumbling down from the sky where his head was sticking.
    Geiger fell back into my arms in a dead faint. While he was coming to I noticed that the big boy needed a suit rather bad. All he had on was several window curtains and table-cloths.
    The first words Geiger gasped when he revived were:
    ‘He wants a snit of clothes.’
    ‘Have you anything that’ll fit me,’ asked the big boy.
    That riled Geiger. He thought the fellow was making fun of him, and he yelled :
    ‘ Do you think I make clothes for the Sierras and keep ’em in stock?’
    ‘Then you must make me a suit, said the big boy.     ‘Make you a suit,’ said Geiger; ‘why it would cost you about three thousand dollars, young man.
    ‘All right,’ said Calaveras; ‘I must have a suit of clothes; besides, my pa is rich.’
    ‘He won’t be, though, if you tackle a tailor very often,’ muttered Geiger.
    ‘Well, to make a long story short, a bargain was at last struck. Geiger was to make the suit; and the Calaverous youth was to pay one dollar a yard for the cloth, three dollars a day to the workmen while the suit was building, and all incidental expenses. He was to pay $1,000 cash, $1,000 in two years and the balance in three years, to be secured by a mortgage on his father’s farm.
    ‘Oh, John, arn’t you—’
    ‘Now, don’t be skeptical, wife, I might not have believed it myself if I hadn’t been there to see. Well, as I was saying—let’s see; what was I say-ing? Oh, yes. Well, Geiger he sent the boy right back to town with instructions to bring the surveyor, but—
    ‘The surveyor, John! What for?’
    ‘Why, to take the young man’s measure, of course. The tape measure method was clearly out of the question, and it would have taken too long to have scaflolded around the fellow as you would do in painting a church steeple. I, myself, suggested the surveyor as the best and quickest way of having it done. Well, the surveyor came with his tripod, compass, transit, sextant and such things. He stood Calaveras up a hundred yards away, and began to bear upon him with his transit, right and left, taking distances and marking angles. Geiger, who was noting it down in his order book, said it was the first time in his life he ever heard the measurer yell.
    ‘Ten feet, six inches.
    ‘Three yards, one foot.’
    ‘Two rods, twenty-four inches,’
    ‘It took almost half a day to make the survey, and the engineer said he guessed the suit would fit if he hadn’t strained his instrument in taking the distances. It was an instrument made for surveying ordinary town lots, and this was the first hard test it had been put to.
    ‘ Well, the suit was made, but the scaffold had to be built after all. It was a queer sight to see twenty tailors on scaffolds all around that young man, sewing away for six days. During the job scaffolding was changed fifty-three times. At last, when the job was finished and the scaffolding taken down, Geiger got mad and told Calaveras he had better take the lumber home, and next time get a carpenter to fence him instead of busting up a tailor.
    ‘Why, did it break Geiger up, John ?
    ‘Just the same thing. His stock was exhausted when the suit was done and he closed up shop.
    ‘He got his money, though, for the clothes?
    ‘Well, yes, but not without foreclosing the mortgage and forcing the old man Calaverous into bankruptcy. Then the old fellow swore he’d shoot his boy if he had a cannon handy.
    ‘No need, however.’
        ‘Why?’
    ‘Because the lad died the next spring.’
    ‘Of what?’
    ‘He growed so fat one day that he split open like a roasted chestnut. That was the day when the greatest windstorm ever known on the Pacific Slope swept over California,
    ‘And John—’
    ‘Yes, dear.’
    ‘Was this young man a Christian?’
    ‘ He was born a Christian, but whether he outgrowed it I couldn’t say.
    “Do you think he went to heaven?
    ‘No doubt of it—that is, he went there; but whether he got in is another question. I’ll bet St. Peter had to unlock the carriage-gate or lay down twenty panel of fence if the young man became an inmate of that country. When I go up there I shan’t be one bit surprised to find Calaveras’ spirit camping on the commons just outside the walls. Oh-a-yah,’ yawned John, guess I’ll go to bed.
    ‘Do, dear. You must be so tired,’ murmured Mrs. Sanscript.

From— The Democratic Press. (Ravenna, O. [Ohio]), 12 Feb. 1880. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.